A PORTFOLIO OF MAINE WRITING

VOI VII - 1983

Decision

My trainer is a tough old woman with one eye, a cauliflower ear, and brown skin wrinkled like hide, but her short nose still turns up at the end and she has never lost a tooth. She cut them all on the ropes and they are still long and sharp. Sheis mean, horrible to me for my own good - drives her beatup Cadillac right up my tail when I'm doing roadwork, actually accelerates enough to almost hit me in the butt because I'm not going fast enough. I'm terrified every step of the way, and this goes on for miles. Every day she gets up before 1 do and slaps me awake, blowing cigar smoke in my face and handing me a huge tumblerful of training breakfast, a hleoderized swill of raw 'eggs, raw liver, brewers yeast and Worcestershire sauce that 1 never fail to puke, toughens the gut. Well you could bounce bricks off mine, so she's probably right asout that too.

My sparring partners are all convicted rapists and sadistic foreigners who really hate me - she picks them for that. She knows all the wardens and parole officers in the county and on occasion has pulled strings and pleabargained through the D.A.'s office in order to get me a particularly mean one. 1 am terrified of them too, though many of them are a lot smaller than I. A lot of times they don't even realize they're fighting a woman hut she makes that work for her too, by pretending to spoil and pamper me like a pet boy so they'll hate me either way. In practice I wear headgear with a nose protec- tor, and she tapes my breasts tight against my rihcage so that nothing shakes under my sweatshirt. I have pretty small hips anyway, and of course she hutches my hair right off so I give out no visual clues. She puts pebbles in my shoes, and sand in my gloves, and chili oil on my

/'

Evening, Anchoring where Pines Grow, at the Ferry Harbor Water rush over shingle-stones, glossy shags move on wing-beat,

and inside, where reeds hold the wind a whipoorwill mourns.

The mirror doesn't care for my drab convalescent face

as I moor my hull to the lovely sun-fall.

Life is a fading ghost, but you tarry for the wine

The traveller's road melt in green haze; and I hum a tune.

Now, none ever asks the way to the Big Town,

but craggy slopes and lonely inn, here is where pines thrive.

Lu Yu, Sung Dynasty (Lu Chi 15)

translated by David Gordon

A h

mouthpiece so I'm in agony during the whole session which lasts four hours or more, but she's trying to teach me not to react to things with tears, which she says ruin your vision in a contest. Naturally

I'm illowed no love life; there isn't a man around who would look at me, and though there are plenty of dykes hanging around the gym who do, they turn me off, make me feel like a piece of meat; and most of the time I'm too exhausted and my hands are too sore to take care of myself, though nature in its way provides for that by giving me dreams about making love on the brightly-lit canvas of a ring in a deserted coliseum with a beautiful unknown fighter who's even b ig ger than I am, and he's very gentle with me and touches me tenderly all over, and I come and come and come and then she's slapping my face and I'm waking up and it's starting all over.

My parents intended for me to go on the stage like they did, hut I have a weak toneless voice that I never could project so I spent my childhood hanging out backstage with the set crews and janitors, playing cards and getting in trouble for feeding people's lunches to the alley cats behind the theater. When my parents died in a hotel fire when I was eleven and my grandmother didn't know what to do with me -I was already five foot ten, one seventy - this one came around and collected me; I don't know why, probably Dad owed her money; I've been in training ever since. I'm now twenty-three years old and have yet to fight a real match for money, hut she says any day now, as soon as she can arrange it with the commissioner who's against mixed matches. There aren't any other women in my class. There used to be one, Sophie McCluskey from Chicago; six-three, one ninety, hut she couldn't get any work either so she put on another fif- ty pounds and dyed her hair orange and went into wrestling, and

that was a good fifteen or twenty years ago. I heard about her from the gym owner who used to date her when he was on leave from the Navy in San Diego.

So I'm ready to go any day now, hut the truth is, I'm not sure she's up for it. Lately I've noticed little things like during ropeskipping she looks like she's daydreaming instead of watching my timing, and she no longer pays attention to the mugs she keeps for my sparring, who stand around in their shorts smoking butts and drinking beer right in the gym and saying nasty things about her loud enough for me to hear. But she notices when I start to go after one of them, and calls me back and says it doesn't matter. And then the other night after I did my five hundred situps and got into bed, she came over and smoothed my hair back, which startled me so that I flinched, but she just smiled and said, Good night dear, and turned out the light, and she's never done anything like that before. She's losing it, getting soft. Well all I know is if I'm ever free of her, I'm going to get in that old Cadillac and drive right out to California, get a place on the beach and find a job as a waitress or mail carrier or bus driver, and work with regular people. And take up something nice like softball or rugby, with a regular women's team, just to keep in shape. And let my hair grow long enough to wear those little tortoiseshell bar- rettes, and buy clothes that show I have breasts, and go places at night. And have lots of pets and a garden, and maybe get married. I'd even go to church. And when I get rich and have a lot of money I don't know what to do with, I'll boy a place with some real good equipment and open a Fighting School for Girls. And name it after her.

H a f i z a H a g l l i Orono

The Picture of Alice Mr. Adams' pith helmet had already fallen off when the python began to swallow him. The snake waited until he was still to push its jaws, spread in a dislocated grin, over the top of his balding head.

So Mr. Adams could no longer see the beauties of Nature around him. He couldn't see the orchid that blushed pale and bled spots of red in the crotch of the tree, nor the great, golden bee nuzzeling the fringed flower. The bee buzzed and quivered to be.

Mr. Adams' glasses fell off, but the black leather belt would be digested, except for the buckle and the Swiss army knife that hung by a braided cord. The stiff gray jodhpurs his wife thought so ugly would go, and the calfskin wallet with the picture of Alice.

So, when his wife came, gun bearers preceeding, parting the jungle with tentative guns, they found his hat - and only that because his glasses lay glittering in a patch of ominous sun. The snake, swollen, mottled with shadow, ignored them

Mary's smooth calves neatly filled her knee-length hose. Her shorts were just enough shorter than they might have been and her hips would have given even a python pause (Mr. Adams had been quite thin). But the snake ignored her.

The searchers pass. The snake, deep in mahogany shade, sampled the air with its tongue. Mary was much younger than Mr. Adams (who'd been quite thin). Her skin was excited with sweat. Her hair curled excessively on the curve of her neck.

"My plump little mouse", Mr. Adams had called her - she didn't look like any mouse now. The sweat outlined her breasts as they strained a t her blouse. The buttons held fast, and gleamed like a gun bearer's eyes. The snake was replete. It would be weeks.. .

Swollen, full, the snake aches with it. It will take weeks for release to come, to pass, as anticlimactic, buttons, belt buckle, army knife, bootlace tips, and, at last, the picture of Alice, thoughtfully laminated in Plastic.

A dried spot on the jungle floor, a clot of undigestible things (including, of course, the picture of Alice). That is all Mary will find when she returns to the jungle for one last look after weeks and weeks of waiting

Robert M. Chute Fmeporl

Therapy And they asked him; Who are you? And if he told them who Their conversation would end He said riding the crests Of glaciers is steady work That he who enters heaven Must be a spool of thread And they asked him: What does that mean? He said translators are needed To interpret the wind That meaning is like a woman best When loose and thin And to see his lawyer for they had sinned They looked at each other And beat the living Shit out of him

#15079-179 Thornaston

The Room Without a Piano There is no longer a piano in the house. Once there were daily arpeggio

studies, the right hand cascading up and down the keyboard in broken figura- tions, the left hand motionless in her lap, although at times Laura would bring it up to supply octaves for a harmonic base. Then the right hand would rush skit- tishly across the black keys alone again. Her life was a polished, worn stool and an old upright piano with remarkable figure in the wood. Under her touch the piano had awakened and begun to take on a life of its own.

Consider her background. At first it was all hunt and peck like an inexperi- enced typist. But eventually the keys, responding under her eager fingers, hegan to tell her things she could never have discovered alone. In short, she matured quickly beyond her mental years with the insistence of the major and minor chords hammering against a soundhoard of her own. In time, she knew the key- board better than she knew herself.

Laura preferred amusing pieces. Often the more difficult ones were the most humorous, and she would come to the piano each day in search of that gaiety which was missing in her own life outside the rooni. She enjoyed conquering the technical problems these pieces offered, disliked the slow, languishing move- ments which were, however, simpler to learn. She craved the language of counterpoint, difficult harmonies, allegro and presto passages. She thought the music should always be slightly out of reach. In that challenge was her joy.

Laura went to visit her grandmother as often as possible, because she was the only one who did not rebuke her for her exclusive attention to music. She would sit in her grandmother's parlor, the heat rising up her legs from the metal floor grate under the stool, and play the simple hymns the old lady liked to hear. Soon her grandmother would be asleep, smiling and slumped against one arm of the overstuffed mohair couch. Then Laura would close the hymnal and begin to compose at the keyboard, embellishing, improvising, fashioning the music into an intricate Rococo structure, yet creating a delicate effect.

When the piano was badly out of tune, beyond playing, Laura would mope about the house in morbid desperation. She had a path she followed on days like this. in and out of the piano room she wandered every fifteen minutes, hoping, expecting a change in circumstances. Had the piano tuner come without her having noticed him? Had the piano, anthropomorphic as she secretly believed it was, repaired itself? She could hear the invisible music - the key hidden inside her fist anxious to be free - and bouncing across the walls, the black and white notes she had been amassing inside the room, demanding release.

There were other days, when she was ill, when she was out, when the room was occupied by her mother's bridge club, when the long hours climbed to their zenith for nothing. Days, when the energy of her body, festering like a wound about to burst, turned in on itself.

Laura often played fourteen hours a day. This was before the piano was taken away, before the long illness, before the atonal silence fell over the house. The marks remain on the floor where the piano once stood - permanent, surfacing when the verithane over the hardwood floor begins to wear away. And from the threshold of the dwrway the dents in the white wall, that once supported the upright case, show dark against the relentless, morning light.

Her mother never could hear the improvement in Laura's playing. She was moreover convinced that she performed those long hours each day for her ego's sake, as if there were no connection between quantity and quality. And perhaps, in Laura's case, she was right. Yet she should have sensed more here than ehdur- ance. More than the will power of a young girl bent on labor.

Laura never wondered why her father did not have a say in family matters or never joined them for meals. She had always known him one step removed from the common interest, had always remembered him different. That he might have chosen to live apart in his own room never occurred to her to be out of character.

Her grandmother, on the other hand, was the anchor in her life. But during the last years, instead of doting on her grandchildren, as one might expect of a woman who had been the ideal mother once herself, she became distant and strange. She used to hear things no one else did, and rock endlessly in her creak- ing wicker chair with that peculiar smile spread across her face. Everyone said it was senility.

The piano now sat like a guest in her grandmother's parlor. No one played it but Laura, who would tiptoe in past the smiling, old woman who heard the music but did not know who gave her this secret like a gift. Some days s h e heard nothing at all.

As a young person, Laura was naturally expected to want to leave home one day. It was even suggested that leaving would he the best thing, considering the history of proverbial skeletons in the family closet. Not to mention Laura's ahnor- ma1 preference for the piano over friends her own age.

In the end she did go away, not for long, and only to a private music school thirty-five miles from home. She had not wanted to leave from the start, and was glad to be in her mother's house again. Laura had been back for just a few weeks when her grandmother died.

After the funeral, she rarely left the house except for an infrequent trip into

town to pick up music paper, fine-point Osmoroid pen tips for composing, and an occasional recording hy Bach or Chopin. Her general interests in music tended toward the Baroque, but she was also inordinately fond of Chopin Etudes and Sonatas. Laura's interests never grew into the twentieth century; in fact, they never really went beyond the late-eighteenth.

No one had ever known what to make of Chupin's B-flat minor Sonata. Laura had been carefully studying this turbulent piece now for nearly a year. The first thing that struck her was that he had written it with dissonances. Chopin, a con^.

poser who was never considered for his dissonant music - it baffled her. Now everyday was ahsorhed by this sonata that hoth fascinated and startled her imagination, that took her further toward the discovery of the mystery behind man's ironic smile.

The Sonata's finale has no parallel in piano music. Laura played the chilling, flash ending with a heavy hand, unlike the technique she would use in any other sonata. When you thought ahout it, the wild and often disentangled chords from the earlier part of the work had no other possible resolution. But son~ehow this joyless, unn~elodious last movement seemed more like a joke than a piece of music.

On and on she would play those arbitrary chords, performing as though she had lost all sense of order. At night the notes came hack to her, offering insights which seemed irrational in the light of day. Some nights she heard the notes like someone's funeral march. She heard it particularly in the third movement, a parody of itself and certainly out of the sonata scheme of things.

When her mother mentioned that she was tired of hearing the Chopin, Laura laughed. "1 am not through with it yet," she protested - her mother sighed. "It is time you moved on to something else" was all she said. After a while her mother forgot all about the piece as it gradually wove itself into the house like the pattern on the wallpaper.

Laura eventually turned away froni her mother. with the usual lack of warn- ing, suddenly mother and daughter were no longer one; the relationship had simply wandered off when no one was looking. Now the only conversation in the house was the Sonata's. Its enigmatic sentences filled the room with words no one but Laura could comprehend.

She was prouder than ever of her long hours - her mother was right about the pride in labor - but something else also kept her at this extraordinary task. The dream of hearing what no one else could was now her overriding desire. Laura I I t ! c ~ m I thin, t 1 I I I a a I - I i ~ l t l i p i n I . l'hnst: clays not even her mother could listen to her w~thout wanting to hold her hack froni where she was going.

It was true, Laura was making progress with the piece, although she was the only one who knew it. She had moved her bed into the room and was playing nearly eighteen hours a day. Nobody had tried to stop her. She was on her own.

Everyone seemed to be watching her progress. The family was busier than ever discussing her habits, or lack of them, you might say. The practice had taken on epic proportions and her mother even brought her bridge club friends around to watch. They did not stay to listen, hut they saw what they came to see, before retreating, one by one, into the living rooni for their game.

Laura was always getting up in the middle of the night, as often as two or three times, and her mother began to tell her friends that she was a sick woman and that her father drank now because he was disturhed by the noises in the night. Nobody else in the family believed that. They didn't think he could be bothered by anything. Laura was her father's own image of himself. She was an inescap ahle part of him; he couldn't be disturbed by her. His secret life sought her out and clung to her, filled her, and sometimes they were one.

Of those who watched her playing, her mother was the only one to 'voice doubts about the sukess of her work. The music itself, filled with Laura's scrawlings, had long ago fallen on the floor under the piano stool. She had never hothered to pick it up, having committed the piece to memory months ago. Her

mother wanted to retrieve it for her, brush off the dust, and replace the Sonata on the stand where it belonged. She wanted to be of some use. But she knew it was too late for that now.

There were prohlenis. Laura was having trouble with the finale, with the iron?, of it. The sphinx she sought was nowhere in sight. Each time she sat down to play she searched for the most articulate expression with which to end the perfor- mance. But she wanted to niake changes everytime she heard it, tear it away from its original structure. She was not content with Chopin's terrihle mind breathing out in the end; she would have liked to put more of herself in the Sonata, she who had already given it her entire life.

On one rare occasion when Laura had spent the nlorning with her father - she had not felt well enough to play - her mother entered the room with the intention of cleaning it. She tugged the vacuum behind her, poking into the cor- ners with the machine and sucking up dust frnnr around the piano and under the stool. When she was almost done, the vacuunl hegan to niake horrible, choking sounds as if it had swallowed something it shouldn't. Quickly she turned off the machine and pulled out the dust hag. There in front of her, in a hundred tattered shreds, were the remains of the Chopin Sonata. The music was brown, lifeless, illegible notes.

Her mother never knew whether Laura noticed the music missing from the floor. But she checked on her more frequently now, took pains to make her cont-

Planes A faint rumble plows the damp spring night, The echo ofa distant silver ship. Tiny insects sunning in the sleepy blue, Crawling placidly across the mottled gradations Have consoled me with their mechanical indifference I keep watch for the sparkled sky.

The prophetic growl summons me to the window. Why don't you call? I ask the papery clouds; Don't you know my nerves are dancing? Your old girlfriends were so pretty They must have swallowed pastel ribbons, got drunk on light. Suicide, the smudge, would keep us innocent, nirvanic. There would never be anything else.

At dream speed they pass, Blind silverfish smoothly feeling paths, Suspended, eternally seeking invisible harbors. Rapt, I would disappear in such flight, A frozen bird always mumbling to You, an indistinguishable dot that stares.

Anne Wadhigh Augusta

' ' Vincent " He haunts me, your Van Gogh! He forces my Western eyes T o read from right to left! To read the bandage on his newly severed ear As the only real lines; The first white amidst the sharp and scattered Straws of southern France. His eyes hold no lines at all, But are areas of intensity, The right one so deep that you must slip belief To see its point. The lips and flaring nose are full and resolute As if they - despite the wild and whirl -understood A pipe, clamped, seems also to speak of roots, And yet, the play its smoke makes, Seals, Ariel's kiss to this whole frame.

J. James Dalr Springfield

Matthew Levey Leaves A ugusta 1973. Before college, before law school: 97 on the FSE. Offer: north border guard. Goodbye Jenny, backseat fun. Her dress! Did not know she owned one

Training. Uniform fitting. Apartment North and Main, John Herd ordered: "Search the hippies if they look away." I woke each morning and smelled Canada. Not once did I weaken, call smiling Ma.

Slim, halr curly, jeans pale, pack stuffed. She smiled at me. Duty blushed. But John stared until her eyes dropped. So into E Room. I grin. First interview. Serious, she watched with eye softest blue.

Jane Ritt. Teacher. Bangor. I searched her pack. First: book, early English poets. Then lace bras, panties. Are Jen's like these? I blush again. She saw. When her lose gownefrom her shoufders did fall.

Also: a cloth bag with perhaps a large jar. "This?" Eyes steady: "Diaphragm." Her voice might be Jenny's Open the bag? Fear even I can see. Against all training, I say to leave.

Pay for my uniform, quit, and hitch the bare Airline to Bangor, Sleeping in Paul's room at Seminary, read poems, walk streets, watch faces Search for Jane Ritt in likely places.

Lamplighter waitress: Ritt? A dancer. She's gone to Boston." Now, lies seemed then only fears or custom. But I went home. Therewithal1 sweetly did my kysse. And softly saide, dere heart, howe like you this?

James MrKenna Augusts

f r~r ta l~lc , tn-ought her pillows ;ind her fanwitc: dossr~rts - \vllilt: ;I widr: distancr spread helt\veen them, her- mother ~rearrilnging furnit~~rr?, and Laura, tlie finalr. I n i l a in i d u I t i e r ~ i t u i t - unifornll?; politc, rno14ng t q e t l i r ~ ~ \\.it11 fyrs that did not see.

Xnr was anyone there to see wht?n 1.au1-i1 madr the final cltal?gt: in the: Sonata. 111 tlie t:rid, she r e a l i ~ d that calling it a Sonata had heen il capricr 1111 Chr~pin's 1~at.t. W h m she recognizrd i t for the jest i t \\,;is, it hecame hers. No\v she played ~vith for\,or, tho enigma ~ ~ p e n i n g and closing like a flo\~w.. The scherzo fairly lei~ped f1.0111 the confinrs of the piano. There \\.as LIILIS~I: ~?v~~ l \ .~ ' l l t ? r t : . Tile finale, a tiny, swjrling, despairing presto, an evanescent r~utpouring, tn twed and lcft 111~: circle of light.

Laura's music is no longer heard I,? anyone. The piano was donated to the music collcge sht? once attended, and now tlie room stands empty in the after- nrxm sun. The hravest of the hridge club nienihers still make their weekly pil- grimage, stealing glanct:~ at each other across the table, hut the table is barely \vide enough to conceal tlleir meaning. There is no danger of then1 getting lost in tht. forest.

Kathleen Lignell stockton Springs

Completion Long before you knew me I caressed you in a Madlol by the Tuileries Your surface was warmed by sun and dampened by an unexpected storm Those who fled that garden

faded to see my brazen fondle of your hip hollowed form Now I feel your real breathing warm beneath my hand and understand the sculptor granted me completion of the circle,he began

Ken Kuensrer Lincolnville

Oil Manifesto Of course we said we were well-meaning And never given to self-scheming. Especially were we not demeaning Of the natives. Not at all.

Thus the news that came out later, Seemed a sort of clever caper From an unrelated paper, On the politics of oil.

Said we'd been only sitting there, Drinking in the desert air, In a place that brought despair To all, except the natives.

It only chanced we made a group, A petrol-knowledgeable troup Of riggers, drillers, all enroute, To help our fr~endly natives.

So really it was awfully nice To know no touch of avarice Could taint our plan to sacrifice Full one percent, for natives.

As every derrick, mounted high, Brought gushing oil toward the sky, We thought that nought could go awry. We thought without the natives.

It was their oil, they screamed and said Their country, it was being bled Of all its wealth. Thus was 1 led To bargain with those natives.

I thought perhaps that five percent Might prove a happy increment. Maddened, they threatened banishment! Those ill-bred uncouth natives.

They changed all rules, to destroy All perquisites that we enjoy. And we ended up in their employ! Those g. d. bloody natives:

Cvnns B. Reid Walerville

Written in Winter The tracks begin unprefaced, in the center of a smooth field, then wander and wind to the very edge. There is no first step to leap from, I don't know where to start. The trail rum from here out of sight; I believe these tracks are yours.

Kirsten Backstrom Bass Harbor

Ice Boy The crystal gathering of flesh to witness the tugging of bodies from an icy lake.

"I see them under the ice. They are under the ice.

Quietly a hooked pole fished the remains, a heavy cotton bale from the muddled surface. They seal him in an aluminum bag, seal the top, then dive for his companion.

It might be never as real as the rigid faces, the plastic forms beneath the ice, calling back to him.

Bmce Spaag Hampden

Son of Wind I'm going out, Ma, away from shore. The wind fills my sails and pushes me to unknown ends

I won't be home to hear you call from harborside, my supper waiting

familiar food familiar fork familiar fullness.

I want hunger and the open sea. I want to be free, the wind's derivative, knowing nothing but passage and the feel of sea under me.

I am the son of wind, skimming the water. I can't hear you, Ma, rock and root of familiar landbound life. I am unbound, my sails full of the life you gave me.

I'll go as far as wind will take me, then home again, Ma, when wind wills.

Linda T~lelbaum Burkettville

Working Lunch Eating an artichoke while reading Virginia Woolf- or should the emphasis be reversed? Is densely-layered Mrs. Dalloway more or less complex than "a thistlelike plant having a large flower head

. with numerous, fleshy, scalelike bracts?"

Pluck a petal, dip its torn base in cayenned Hollandaise (for without sauce, " I say it's spinach, and I say 'to hell with it!' ' 7 and draw out green-flavored pith between the-teeth. Read a paragraph, a line, and turn back, searching for some piquant embellishment to render a pulpy image more polarable:

"Lying awake, the floor creaked. . . " A h , Virginia, if I were insomnious parquetry, I'd be creaking too. Book in n2v lap, the pile of exhausted leavo on the ruucer at my elbow grows I've tidily providedfor the detritus of my meul- but where does one di.spose of chewed and harren thoughts?

. . .Reaching fragile inner segments now,, yielding imperceptibly nourishing, near-translucent scraps of essence. The gain is not worth the effort upended, and I cut away the choke to reach the solid heart of the matter beneath.

I'm tempted to perform a lilerary surgery, loo. Effrontery, I know: but, poor caged Clarissa, I know you're in there somewhere, imprironed in sterile, verbose superfluities, soundlersly shrieking to be let out. . . .

Epiphany! Oh, dear Ms. Woolf, have I somehow, at last, reached the core of your thistlated enterprise?

Pat Morgan Roekland

Snipers

How The Ball Bounces Research shows that a basketball hits the noor 1690 times in an average game. Winners dribble or bounce it 912 times, losers 657, and officials 79. . .

I identxv with the hull, not the floor: the air inside, pushed around into duferent shapes, resilient, the very empty heart of the thing, the nothingne.ss that makes it possible. Silence of dead oxygen allows rubber, ,floor, ro sound thud- thud.

. . .The ball itself is responsible for 42 independent bounces.

rerr, I'lunkett Sandy Point

Newly Discovered Stanzas to lo ria in Excelcis Deo Ange1.r who eat lunch on high always order ham-on-rye; if there is no ham-on-rye they will take a pizza pie. Glo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ooo-ria, sausage and anchu-o-vy.

When it's time their thirst to slake it's beer in pitchers drawn by Blake; and so you see it S our mistake to think that angels live on cake. Glo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ria, homebrew or a good strong ale.

Sylvester Pollet East Holden

Were Everywhere The book was titled, simply enough, Survive! I read it fourteen

times, blueprinting my subconscious and tuning my instincts accordingly. And just in the nick of time, too.

The following day, I found myself floundering in a sea of human- ity. I felt the telltale pressure on my elbows, felt myself about to be crushed, drawn down by the undertow. Instinctively, I bunched up my arms and lifted my feet off the ground. And there I was. just as the book had promised, bobbing like a duck in a millpond.

There was only one problem. This was America, and everyone was concerned with survival. The entire crowd had read the book or heard of it on talk shows. They all hunched up their arms, too, and lifted up their feet, until we sat there like so many frogs on a lily pad. A monk walked by then, with flowing robes and a book of numbers. He looked at us, and all he said was, "Beautiful." According to mv book, he should have made himself as inconspicuous as possible and walked, not run, quickly away from the crowd.

That night, I Lay awake for many hours, donternplating the monk's behavior, the situation in general, reviewing my survivalist readings and the precautions I had taken. My thoughts were rudely inter- rupted, however, and bore no fruit. Chaos erupted, total dislocation and breakdown of all systems.

In my bunker, there was no time for thought, time only for hoard- ing my three-week supply of food, shooting marauders, explaining to friends and neighbors less prepared than myself that this was sur- vival we were talking about, not brotherhood - before shooting them also. (These explanations, incidentally, were in violation of the book's instructions. "Don't talk," the book said. "Shoot for the head or chest.") Fortunately, my ammunition held out.

There was only one problem. Three weeks later, food gone, I found myself on my own, beyond the scope of my readings. Two things 1 knew for sure. One, 1 was starving and needed help. Two, anyone still alive was a survivalist. I knew something about survivalists. I chose slow starvation, foraging, gnawing on roots in the shadows of my bunker.

It was then that the monk returned. His robes were singed and torn. In place of his book, he carried granola. How had he managed to survive, I asked. He tapped his chest. "Kevlar," he said; "bullet- proof." His head? Kevlar, too. He lifted his mask, a bulletproof visor, revealing a face remarkably similar to my own. I shrugged and ate granola. (This response to the monk, incidentally, was sheer thoughtlessness, a flagrant violation of the book's code; I should have shot him in the head when he lifted his visor.)

That night, I made up for my mistakes. I pumped my remaining ammunition into the eyehole of the mask. To my surprise, the monk was not there, having stepped outside the bunker to urinate. He stood in the doorway now, while I stood naked, caught in the act and without ammunition. Hand-to-hand combat, I thought, death blows, a chop to the thorax. At the last moment, however, Chapter Eight flashed in my mind, a cautionary footnote: "He reasonable: retreat in the face of superior force."

1 chose the course of reason. The monk, so like myself in every facet and dimension, had about him an aura of extraordinary quick- ness and strength. In the morning, I followed him from the bunker; he had the granola, after all. I followed him, cringing in his shadow; snipers were everywhere, and he wore the armor.

Hans Krichels Bucksport

Alishya of the Graveyard

I cup my hands, hold air in palms like stuff to be kept, want all of it, all air, to be mine all time, but the moment I move to go anywhere else, that air I had thought was mine is mine no more, was never, no time, no time.

When she is born, when she is born again, when, next time. . .

Daddy makes me breathe in a paper bag The air condenses, mine and mine and mine again, until I calm, my eyes grey and heavy as sky before a storm. Daddy makes me do this, but it's for my own good, he says, and only when I can't stop moving, wh'en I spin round and round and rattle all over like a tree full of wind chimes.

Alishya races to the graveyard, leaps across the granite stones, finds a hidden knoll where she can whirl her body round, dances till the starry night grows old, there,

wishing she won't have to go back home.

The songs spring from me, I can't hold them hack. All of me shivers, every inch of me clamors to get something I want, but I can't move, I can't move, I've got my head in a bag Daddy thrust into my face. Oh, but I'm getting all the air I've ever breathed back again, making sure nothing of me is lost.

When she is born, when she is born again, when, next time, she'll move so slow, one life will seem like ten, when, next time, next time. . .

I want this song out of me! But the moment I hear it go, it becomes forever mine, forever me, and I yearn to breathe it back into me again, and hide it away unheard, having never been.

When she is born, when she is born again. .

One morning in a blue April I'll wake and discover that this life I'm living now is just the shimmering vision of a prenatal trance, that the next time coming is my real life.

When she is horn, when she is born again, when, next time. . .

In my next life, my real life, I'll know already what to do, what not to do, and why. When I am two, I will say to mother and father, I'm much too old for school, send me to life. But perhaps they will not believe a tiny child should utter such a large thing and thev might feel safer with me locked in the closet, my head in a paper bag, so what good, then, will a second chance do me?

When she is born, when she is born again, when.. .

Mother's got her nurturing hand on my always, on my things, my hair, my clothes, the way I walk, the tilt of my head, and if anything is out of line, my barrette a mite rakish, my smile faintly cynical, the tone of my voice too soft, too loud, too true, too false, she curls her devotional hand about my throat and strangles me with disapprobation.

When she is born, when she is born again, when, next time, she will not tak the same abuse again, when, next time, next time.

Going to Grandmother's is like going to a class C flea market held inside an old barn, windows clamped tight

'against the fresh rain. So hot I cannot breathe, so cramped and cluttered I feel like a hatrack, holding my arms stiffly high to keep from tumbling any semi-precious cupie doll or IBM card Christmas tree from tremulous balance atop tilted boxes. Each visit, I'm forbidden to touch

her plate of carefully arranged and gilted macaroni, lest an elbow should fall off and be lost forever in her bins of shirtless buttons, her bags of buttonless shirts.

She says to me, Alishya, Is Jesus in your heart, girl? And I have to say something to appease her, like, Forever, Grandmother, and I'm so happy or, In my next life I'll be bleached white by Jesus, pure and true.

Then she wet-kisses my cheek and forces some of her Hamburger Helper on me, a pitcher of Nestle's Quik and some of her favorite coffee Jello with Cool Whip. I'm gasping for breath, for a space and time for thought, but even as I crawl out the door on my hands and knees, hoping she won't see my escape for all the piles of bags and boxes I must scuttle through, she's caning right out after me, onto the front stoop, dragging behind her a sack full of Spaghettios, Junket, and plastic penguins made especially to hold baking soda attractively in the refrigerator, and in her free hand, however she found one, she clenches five felt cows with magnets on their backsides and noodle letters pasted on their fronts that say, Holy Cow, Are You Still Eating? and she cries sweetly, Take these down to Olive's house, dear, and keep one for yourself, for the door of your Frigidaire.

I cup my hands, hold air in palms like stuff to he kept, want all of it, all air to be mine all time, but the moment I move to go anywhere else, that air I had thought was mine is mine no more, was never, no time, no time.

Alishya strolls into the graveyard, kicks her way along the stones, finds her favorite knoll, a place to set her body down, rips open a pack of Funny Bones, there, a cemetary snack of Funny Bones.

I told her, Grandmother, your vases gleam behind glass, your plates, fifty states stacked unseen, even the top toppled by bowl within bowl within bowl, your faith tenacious, one more thought to keep your clutter and I can't visit anymore, for you bump into me and I into you, I can't move

your life, you're long life, no, you aren't anything at all but things.

When she is born, when she is born again, when, next time, next time.. . she will not make the same mistake again when, next time, next time.. . what she knows now, she'll start out knowing then, when, next time, next time. . .

Mother, you are yellow smoke billowing around me. I can't breathe, can't even own the air for the one moment I need it. How can you expect me to be the same person as you, when you are already vaporous, finding substance only in your clinging to the lips and collars of others?

Alishya frequents Seaside Graveyard, knows the names on all the stone?, likes a special knoll where she can lay her body down, shut her eyes and dream another home, there, hoping she might soon be fading home.

Daddy, you are my stifling disappo~ntrnent, a river stopped by a dam of despair, and in your welling up for not being able to let yourself out, you are drowning me, and I've never been able to stop treading water, gasping for breath,' and all my life has been a wasted motion, just staying afloat, dying for air.

Yes. Yes.

When she is horn, when she is born again, when, next time, she'll move so slow, one life will seem like ten,

0 .- when, c Q next time, !? a 0

next time. - 0 Z 4 D

I cup my hands, .S hold air in palms, s like stuff to be kept, L- m want all of it, t m m all air,

% to be mine, m z all time, Q but the moment I move t o go 3 +. anywhere else, 0

2 that air I had thought was mine is mine no more, was never, no time, no time.

I can't move for you. I can't do your breathing for you. I can't d o for you. 1 will not do.

Alishya staggers to the graveyard, trips her way among the stones, finds her favorite knoll where she can lay her body down, gives up her song and leaves her weary bones, there, gives up her mind and drops her funny bones.

Alishya, name cut into stone in the graveyard.

When when when when when when when when when when

Cathy Counts Portfsnd

Compulsions Richard kept his sneakers hammered into the wall of the cahin, to

the right of the bookcase. He did not like the kind with squared toes that reminded him of Buster Brown shoes. He had a habit of adding to his stock whenever, in Harvard Square or Freeport, Maine, he came across the right one. By now he had amassed quite a collection. They hung there in varying states of decomposition, for the stones of the island, as well as the nail on his big toe, had a way of wearing them through. It seemed to Sarah as if innumerable pairs of eyes were peering out, reproaching her. When she had time she would take some embroidery wool and go over them, fringing them with eyelashes.

Sarah had just come in from the annual sale in the front yard of the library. By the time she arrived, late, the hooks, spread out on the single cardtahle and hoards on sawhorses, had been picked over. There was not much left to choose from: a row of last summer's New Yorker's, some Readers Digest collections of abridged novels, a few worn children's books - nothing like the Birds of the State of Michigan that she had found last year, done by some member of the university staff and full of beautiful woodcuts. Still, for fifty cents, she had selected a hook on compulsions that looked brand new. She was about to pore through it as she lay stretched out on the bed on top of the faded India print stitched years ago by some long-gone aunt of Richard's into some semblance of a quilt.

It was fun to take such a book and fit the people she knew into its categories. Sarah had never met anyone, to her knowledge, who washed his hands fifty-five times a day, hut the description of com- pulsive talkers was a perfect picture of Lucy Kingsworth. Could Lucy ever have been a patient of the doctor's? She flipped to the dustjacket to see where he had practiced. Probably not.

Then she hit upon the test for obsessive-compulsions. This entailed getting up to find the small yellow tablet and a pen. She hoped Richard wouldn't see her.

He was outside preparing to saw up a log that had floated in and would make good firewood. For moments she watched him measur- ing it off meticulously into even sections before he took the saw blade to it. When it was all cut up, he would not toss the pieces hack, letting them land every which way onto the odds of lumber that had accumulated when the roof was patched last summer; he would stack them onto a neat pile in back of the cahin. He had been calculating what part o f a cord he had gathered so far this year. Numbers were no problem for him. He had practiced for years adding and multiplying them on license plates along the expressway. So Richard was far too engrossed to peer through the window and catch Sarah padding into the front room, looking slightly rumpled as she bent over the table to take the yellow tahlet and pick the pen from the jar of gullfeathers, pencils, etc.

A Perfectly ~xecu-ted U- Turn I think of you in vivo In your last broad swipe across the slate A jaunty turn that would belie The onrush of the current you turn against Like a surfer who abandons the conquered wave To get a jump for the long paddle back Who doesn't allow for the next wave and the next The onrush of bodies, boards, and the number nine swell That sweeps the beach.

What matter career, pregnant wife, or child-to-be Perhaps the beer had gone a little flat And a dash of salt could bring it back Like the perfect arc the artist strikes across the foolscap The cast the fisherman drops light as a Mayfly on the water The flyball taken over the shoulder going away The salted tail that catches a condor or pterodactyl.

And finally consider the time of day The light, the sense of frustration The impulse, call it choice That sparks the neural explosion. Crisp, double-clutched downshift Then back on the throttle, enough To hang the rearend smoothly through The spindrift turn to meet The unbelieving truckdriver head on.

Roland Bums Fort Kent

She returned and settled hack onto the bed and began the list, numbering off the page into twenty-four entries. She made two columns, thirteen in one, which left eleven for the other. This annoyed her, hut Sarah didn't want to waste another sheet of paper. (Richard would have figured it out first.) Already some of the pleasure of taking the test had been dissipated. Still, Sarah did not want to he pushed around by an orderly-column compulsion, so she went ahead scoring herself. It looked like a 100% on the first nine

-" questions. Ut course she preterred to have things done her own way. Didn't that demonstrate s well-developed ego? Naturally, she couldn't always succeed, hut not getting her way, Sarah knew, was to yield to something less than perfect.

It wasn't until she reached the tenth entry, 'I do things precisely to the last detail," that her score fell precipitously. Sarah turned to the end of the test to check what the ratings meant. The doctor evidently set this up as a trick. A perfect score was exactly what you didn't want. In fact, it meant you were dangerously borderline.

Sarah had too much respect for hooks to heave one across a room. She stared out the window for a minute at the woodpile where Richard now was carefully placing one of the new logs, completely hare of hark, bald as an egg. Had he peeled it himself?

Then she reaached over, pulled a single sneaker off the wall, walked to the kitchen and set it into thg trash container labeled, not "Cans and Bottles" hut "Papers and Plastics," and turned on the kettle for tea.

Frances Downing Vaughan Monhegan

For My Father Father, the front steps you helped me build, ten years ago, are rotted now, and the cellar door you cut and braced and set on its hinges has sagged: the paint flakes off under my hand, rust cakes the bolt, the frozen hinges.

But I guess you knew that in this old world the things we make all wear out to naught. Yet still you left me your tools, hanging above the workbench, the hammer handles silver-smooth, the saws oiled, ready.

And at eighty you went out with a spade dug six holes in the backyard, and planted a figtree, a peach and a plum, and three grapevines, though you never hoped to see the swollen buds of spring, the dark fruits of fall.

For you it was enough to know that someone, your son's daughter maybe, would wander, some smokey autumn day, out across the yard and find, hidden among the reddenig leaves, a dusty, forgotten clump of grapes,

and would press them one by one against her tongue. And you didn't even hope that she might think of you as she lies dreaming and humming beneath her canopy of leaves, the hot grape- pulp still sweet and acid on her lips.

Burton Hatlen Orono

Thanksgiving, 1981 for my father

Late November, the moonsnails half-buried in sand, I turn them up with the toe of my shoe to find the same striated blue of the sky. I want to put them in my pocket and board a plane for Agadir away from the splitting frost and the months of waves that will incise them with a tidal geometry.

I know now why you told such stories. They were a protection, a splendid shell made to rescue you from places you never intended to go. Isuppose that is why I went to the forgotten port of Suakin, to find coweries from the Red Sea. I left them on the sill of a mosque, abandoned as the rest of the city, a carapace.

I went farther, for diamonds that would not slip through the neck of a Coke bottle, searching the background of photographs belonging to a Lebanese sailor whose only treasure was the phone number of a stranger in New' York City. Perhaps they were pressed into the vaginas of his whores or laid out like a nest of uneven eggs in ,a chillum rag on the bar. Once I wrote you I had found them; Ama Dablam, Lhotse, Sagamartha, place of perpetual snow. To be there would have lifted the inertia that filled you; the irony being now I can find you nowhere in this world to say it will be the staying that kills you.

Grandmother's Requiem I rode my bike five miles to watch her die. The white pasted face swinging loosely on the unhinged neck. I whispered softly hoping she wouldn't hear. How could I talk to death? She gripped my hand, once and not for long. My heart echoed off the walls. I thought she must have heard as she strained toward me. I needn't have feared. Into that quiet she was reaching.

Barbara Visser Camden

O l d M a n Nicho l son My memories of Old Man Nicholson, of the Arthur C. Carsdale plact?, and of

Donald Mason have dimmed or altered only n~oderately over the decades, or so I believe, hut my understanding of then^, ancl especially of Donald Mason, has changed, grown I guess one would call it, ancl that not just hecausc nf my ageing, and not only because of cxperience, c~lthough the experiences (long talks, confes- sions) have occurred, hut hecause of a sorne~vhat altered awareness during recent years on the part of many in our socit:ty. I have never lost a sense of the weird strangeness, the on1.v partl), uncovered fear I felt more than fifty years ago \vhen I came hack to my lone room following that encounter ( i f it was an encounter) at Carsdalds.

What is ncrv is that today I can imagint: Donald Mason, that samr night, same hour, also in a lone room perhaps, in that L'ictorian huilding L\vo doors arvay, agonizing under a different kind of fear, self-hlamc, and anxiety. I t was not tllst I ever held him to he evil exactly, hut hofore, I did not knou', nr did not chonst? to know, or did not think how, possihly lit? \voulcl feel.

Sandy Rohhins and 1 had been pla,ving t w o d c a t in the hack lot h~:hind Carsdale's \vith some yn!ngcI, children we accepted, even encnurngecl si~nic- limes, hecausc \vithout them wc lhad no one to makr up an inficld, let alune an outfield. Thoughtlessly we had out-played them, which was not difficult, staying at hat, so that, hored and discouragt:d, they had gone home, yelling at us ahout unfairness, and we were there looking at each other, as much as to say, "What now?" when a rather gentle voice from heyond the low fence asked:

"How do ynu fellows expect to play hasehall when tht: light's almost failetl' You might better come over in my yard and talk a hit."

We stared at him, astonished. For as long as we had used tlut hack lot, we had had trouble with the Arthur C. Carsdale place. If we went around the fence, under the grape arbor, past the huge barn and across the drive\va\, hot~vcnn the napkin-smooth lawns and clipper1 hedgt?s (that was the shortest way t11 sdiool), Mr. Nicholson would he after us, shuuting \vhat no-goods we were, threatening to tell our parents or at least call the police. Wt: would outrun him, of course. enjoying it in a way. Thrills.

Or if ont? of us hit a high foul that sniashcd one of the harn windows, or if from beyond a tall hedge we threw liorse.chestnuts at the barn iwhicll had heconie a garage hy that date), and we o f tm did, Mr. Nicholson would come out, his tempt'r roused, yelling what he would do when lie laid hands on us. Yet now, here was this medium-l~eight, blond young fellow, speaking to us just as if we werr! grnwn- ups, and inviting us into what we had learner1 to consich enemy territory

"We weren't playing hasehall," Sand>, told hinl "There's not enough of us. Wt: were just playing two-0'-cat."

"Oh, of course. Well, whatever you want to call i t . You don't want to try to play any more now anyway, do you? Come on over I'll shmv ),ou sonlething inter. esting."

"What sort of thing?" "You come and you'll find out," he said quietly. For a few seconds we just stood there. Instead of the young man, I kept seeing

Old Man Nicholson, who had always bothered me because of the way he looked: he seemed eight feet tall to us, scrawny, with long, gangly arms. His hair was thin and gray; the whitish flesh was tight over the bones of his face; and his eyes had a cold, colorless, fish-like glare to them which was enough to freeze you where you stood; that is, if you were anywhere near him. And I had heen, once.

That had been about a year earlier when Grandmother was still alive. Just before I went to school, I had gone past the door to the room where she lived at the front of the house, and had looked in there. She was sitting next to her north window, the white hair coiled on top of her head, staring out, solid, unmoving, at the morning sky as if it held the answer to some question.

Then when I walked home at noon, Anna, instead of being in the kitchen, was up at the corner of our block, waiting. She told me my grandmother had died; therefore, I should go in the back door with her, he quiet, and disturb no one. I noticed the shade was drawn down over the window my grandmother had looked out of, and that someone had stopped the grandfather clock at exactly 10:50.

Later, in the narrow hallway on the second floor, I found myself looking up at Old Man Nicholson, skull-like face, towering threat, and all. He had just come out of Grandmother's closed room and was clutching something under his leather jacket, holding both arms across his middle as 'if he had a stomach ache. Still, there was a bulge there. I half expected him to yell at me for something, and I cringed up against the wall and shut my eyes. He went past and into the bathroom without saying anything, but the glassy, even marbly look in his eyes stayed with me. Soon I heard the watercloset being flushed. 1 knew he had a right to be there in the house, of course (it was part of his business) but neither could I ever forget his look.

So now, Sandy and I, faced with this new young fellow, who sounded kind and friendly, gentle even, and was inviting us over to the Arthur C. Carsdale pro- perty, didn't know precisely what to say or how to act. Yet we were curious, and went with him under the grape arbor, past the large garden of roses in bloom now and filling the air with their rich, penetrating scent that went sweetly down into the lungs. 1 felt a t once that I was in a somewhat different and rather strange

environment. We went up the wide, concrete steps to the rear entrance of the Carsdale estahlishrnent and through the wide glass doors into a room that I did not care for.

The odor was different in there. Not roses now, hut something I was unused to, except that perhaps I had caught a whiff of it on Old Man Nicholson that time when I met him at home in the hall and shut my eyes, but I had been unahle of course to shut my nose too. The smell seemed keen and sharp, as if it went right intc my midd l~ somehow, and I stared at the slanted, porcelain-topped table, and at the drains around and under it, and at two clean white buckets under the lower end of it. I almost turned around and went out.

But the young man was ahead of me, with Sandy, going through the next pair nf douhle doors, and I followed theni. We were in a long, high.ceilinged room, with \w-y large winduws at the other end and at tht: side, facing out at the new- leafed trees, the lilac bushes (I could smell thwn too, or at least I Llrouglil I could, and at the smooth, carpet-like, green lawn. IIeav\, drapes hung at each side of every window, and there were C O L I C ~ P S and many chairs.

At the end of the room j ~ ~ s t to our right, was the coffin,as I knew hy then it was going to he, a rather fancy casket with silk lining, and Tying in it a hod? in what I rcnimnhcr as a rather fluffy dress, m e arm hent across her middle, httr fingers holding a litle b o u q ~ ~ e t of roses, and her hair wavy ancl graceful around her head whers it rested on a silken pillov,.

"Come here, look," the young man said. "See %'hat a beautiful job I did on Ihel-. Isn't that something? I work and I work, as if I were a painter, an artist I1 am an artist) hut there's no one I can show, it to, 01. when they do see it, ills not w h ~ n I am there. All I get is nly pay rt?ally. There ought to he more, somehow, mure appreciation. There n ~ g h t to h e . . . " His voicft driftt?d off.

Sand? and I stood heside the coffin, the opened upper half of it, staring, hrcathing quietly, ancl saying nothing. Then I put out my hand and tuuchod thc forehead of the hody. I \vantt?d to test somehow what was real, to know if feel in some way i\ as the same as smell and look. It wasn't. It xvas waxe?, cold. My spinal . n a r \ ~ s seemed to qui\,er and 1 drew hack my hand rather quickly, glancing up to seo i f the man was watching me. He was, hut he did not st?em to carc what I did.

l'lien, without warning, I rr:cognized the hody, remembered I had seen hr:r (I\lrs. McL'icker) when she was.alive. Shc had li\,ed a half mile up the hill r? hertz the lawns and h o ~ ~ s e s were very largc. Often I had seen her drive past our hnuss, rno\,ing very slmvly, in a quiet, elertric-powered ~ 1 1 1 . ~ one she and her sister o\vncd, the only O ~ I : in i01\,11. I ~ ~ e ~ i i e ~ n h e r pulling my hands up into rnh' sleeves ancl shrinking hack a little.

'The young man was talking again, thinly, hut I did not listen to what 111: said. I almost did not hear it. And then we were going hack through tht: douhle doors (tlic man putting his hand gently on my shoulder as we walked) tlh~~~uglh the room with the porcelain table and buckets, and out onto the concrete pnrcli where again we cuuld smell the lilacs and roses, and watch thc: fircflics in tlic scented dusk. The man sat down on the top step, and Sandy and I, prohahly try- ing not to he impolite o r ungracious, sat down also.

"My name is Donald, Donald Mason," he said. We told him ours, and then he asked ahout where \ve lived, which scliod we

went to, and what we studied. All was gentle and smooth, and s u ~ l d e ~ ~ l y my leg muscles grew tight, as if I were having cramps, and I found that my arms were gripping my knees hard.

He asked us about English, and I said yes, I liked English. Then, what did we read, not what did we read in school, but what did we read at home, that we read because we liked it? It was a good question.

"Conrad." He glanced quickly at me. "Conrad?" "Sure," I told him. I had seen full-page advertisements in the New York Tribune.

Conrad had died the year before, and Douhleday, Page and Company liad brought out his complete works, leather-hound. The advertisement liad splashed a full-rigged ship over the entire page, with titles and descriptions of Conrad's works printed across it and across the ocean and even the seagulls. I had thought: Oh boy, sea adventure! And I hegan reading Conrad.

"Which s tory?he asked. "The Niger of the Narcissus." "You like that?" "Not really, not n~uch," I said. "No?"

"It was not what I had expected." "But you finished it?" "Yes. I was kind of bored, hut there was something about it-" "And what was there about it?" "1 don't know. I don't know how to say it." "Was it the way he uses words, the pattern of the words, snmt:tliing liht, that'?" "Maybe. I guess so." "An atomsphere." "Yeah. Sure." "You are very precocious." 1 am what? Sandy was staring across the driveway, watching the blink of the fireflies, and

the shadow of the cast-iron deer an l l i f ? next lawn, the one that almost looked real

if you did not know any better, the one we used to shoot beebees at from my upstairs window sometimes when we thought nobody could catch us.

"You have not hy any chance read a new book called he Inward Strife, have you?"

"No, I haven't." I had not even heard of it. "The Inward Strife, by Norman Anderson." He sounded, as if he were talking

about God. "It is shocking, truly shocking in places," he whispered. "But the writing is profoundly, excruciatingly beautiful. Ordinarily I would not suggest that a young man of your age read it, but- hut- with your tastes, shall I say? - it would perhaps he appropriate."

I turned and looked at his eyes. He shifted his gaze the other way. "1'11 lend you my copy if you can't get one at the library o r somewhere," he said. "I'll try the library." "I got to get home," Sandy said. "The Old Man will be after me with his strap." "Me too," I lied.

"Well, I hope you will come again. 1 appreciate it. I hunger for appreciation. You will, won't you?" He held out his hand, first to Sandy, then to me. He pressed my hand eagerly, and all at once I felt sad (not scared, just sad) but did not know exactly what I felt sad about.

Sandy and 1 went back under the grape arbor, across the hack lot, and on toward our homes. "Geez, he's a strange one!" Sandy said. "I don't want to go hack there no more."

I thought about it for sonie seconds. "No, I guess likely we don't." But I could not have said why.

Sandy went on to his house, and I turned to the right toward mine, where its three-storeyed hulk loomed up like a shadow among the blinks of lightning hugs, in the strong scent of lilacs, of roses, and now of the pollen of Austrian pine, of the pine that towered beside it, even above it.

I stared in through the windows from the front porch. There we1.e niy parents. I could have walked in on them there any time. But I didn't; I stared. And tliere he was, solid, firm, sitting in that straight, Rig1i.backed chair which must have been designed for a hishop of something, with the card table before liiin, and dealing out a hand of solitaire.

Beyond him a ways, under the other lamp, she was reading. I watched, and felt quieter finally and went in and talked with them about our playing hall and then sitting around after it grew too dark, and talking, hut I did not say where, nor with whom. Father said yes, all that was fine, but it was time now for nlr to go to hed, past time, and since lie was a man one did not argue with ahout a thing like that, I kissed each of them and wit up the stairs to the secnnd floor and the hathroom, past what had h e m my grandmother's room, and then up to the third floor where my castle was, I closed the door and put on the lights, nut just the one over my desk, hut also the one at niy hed, the one over the bureau, and the one at the far end too. The sout11 window was open. I could smell pollen from tlie Austrian pine and the scent of the weigela two storeys helow, close to the house, hut neither of them cheered me, and, undressed now, I turned off tlic lights, got under tlie cover on the hed, and stared at the near dark.

Then my eyes grew used to dim light, and I hegan to see again in the soft gray of the spring night: I could make nut the desk, the chair, the other chair, the bureau, tlie wardrobe where I was supposed to hang my clothes, and the sloping ceiling. Through the window to tlie south came a faint hint of light which I knew was from the Arthur C. Carsdale Funeral Home where they kept some lights on all night anyway. Yet it was not simply that the light came in; there were the odors, a mixture now, of all kinds of growth -lilacs, roses, and the Austrian pine too, rich and overhearing and in a way almost suffocating - and I found myself jumping clear of the bed and going fast to tlie window. I pulled down the shade. I held it hard at the bottom and pulled it down a trifle more so that when I let go, some of the shade would lie on the sill, flat, almost entirely cutting out light.

Finally I went to my hedroonr dour and opened it. There was some light seep- ing up the winding stairs, and I could hear the murmur of my parents' voices in their dressing room. I returned to the bed and got under the covers, lying there, caln~ly almost, thinking ahout what had happened and wondering why I felt the way I did about Old Man Nicholson, for it seemed to me now that lie, bvith his swearing, his glowering, his driving us off, his everlasting ugly scolding - it seemed to me now that old Nicholson, like certain other adults in my world, was a comfort, a sign of something solid, that 11e was the right thing in tho right place and the right time; and I was sorry, rcally deeply sorry, that he was gone (wherever it was he had gone). I missed him: Nicholson, old, ugly, horrif,ving, skin-tight, skull-like Nicholson. Why wasn't he hack where he belonged, keeping Sandy and me and many others in 0111. ordered place, he or sornehody just like him?

1 remeniber huddling down in the bed, waiting and yearning to fall asleep, and trying.not to think.

Rut now, as I said before, ~ , l i a t of Donald Mason at that same moment back there in the Arthur C. Carsdale Funeral Home, in a small room alone soniewlrere, cursing himself perhaps for having ,vielded to inlpulse even so minutely, so tenta- tively, so gently, recalling Nicholson's grim admonitions when that one finall),, two days hefore, had agreed to hiring Donald: "You walk a straight line, get it? You satisfy our patrons, the respectable, the backbone of a decent community. I don't give a damn about your artistry, ahout you being an artist. You just do

things right, o r one inchover the line and I'll drop you like a red hot iron, if not worse."

And now, now, after he had done what he had done, said what he liad said, against hetter judgment, was one of those hays going to grasp it, to suspect, to talk? And to whom would he talk? Was tlie telephone going to ring in a few minutes, or tomorrow, or the next day, and not about another body fnr the Home, hut about l ~ i n ~ . Donald Mason?

Edward M. Holmes Winterport

The Neigh b ors Though twenty years in this country- they are isolated by language, old customs and fear.

Even their grandchildren who visit in summer snicker in the hallway at the old superstitions and threats that no longer work

I catch them when leaving the house peering through the blinds at me and sometimes on a Sunday a daughter with no accent and a shiny car takes them out for a drive to the country.

Maureen Walsh Jackman

By the author o f

JOURNEY Hints, I'm always waiting for a hint, a rhyme, a

familiarity of sounds, one calling to another, then my momentary future

proceeds; take this for instance this instant, you summon me, presuming

it is for us ? we dissolve in thin air ? long long pause.. .I 'm waiting for a hint,

hinterland of feeling; I'm reading THE FIRMAMENT OF TIME while an ant crawls on the side of

my naked foot. I do believe we are One Body, I'm including death, Loren Eiseley,

the flowers in this temporary garden and firmament.

John T~gliabue Lewistoa

The Artist and His Model With an air of calm deliberation Edith turned and sat down in front of the glint.

ing planes of her dressing tahle mirror, arranged herself fanning out the drapery of her wrapper precisely so, and for a moment contemplated the face in the glass. This face always seemed like the face of a stranger in the morning, a broad, sallow, visage so at odds with her night dreams of 1lers~lT. It all seemed to fit het- ter after hreakfast with her husband, xvho was a pra~:tical man. This morning, though, she did not rise until she heard the retreat of his carriage wheels.

She saw by the face of the clock that there was little time. She stirred and Iicgan her pr~parations, bl~vsliing her coarse, c~n.Ied hair n,ith the tortoiseshell brush, reaching lor small pots and hc~nes of clpstal or china, smr~othing cremes against tlie skin that stretched over her til~oarl loreliead and high cheekbones. Her cyes were always fixed in an unl.linching stare at the image in the glass, her f i g ~ r e erect, Iier shoulders stiff and straight. She was as cumplete and ertrava- gant in tier tr~ilet as a ymlng woman preparing for her s\veetheart, her lover.

Fklitli sat a mnmtmt longer, tilting hcr head hack and lortli, studying tlie imago. Llnknntting I 1 1 v wri~ppcr she rose and walktxl to\varci a loose pile of lilaek satin and \'elwt lyilig at l l i p t~lgc, of her h r d 7'1in~1g11 this \\.:IS 11~1, lrwol.ite dress Lollis, Ilt:r Iiusl~nn~l, [lid not care fur i t . He poirltrtd out that lhr squaw cut nccklinr n ~ f e l y f n t ~ ~ a l t l h e h r ~ l ! 1 1 r s . Tlir vel\,et ho\vs, lie would crlntin~le, \verc. ahsurtl, 1it.lwlging on tlir clrcss ill a srwntccn ?ear old, or a tart. And tlie ~~hint:stunes. " \ V t ~ I I nl? dixr~.," he had haid rvitli n p.im pat 011 her wide hand, ,'You are simply iiot tiit, 1~1iin1:stonr thflpe." A I I ~ i t is not that Edith disagrt:od. Shr sa\v his p in t s . But tlie dress had heen niiidc:, at great cxpense, 11y one of Pliiladt:lphia's must fashionable drwsmakers. And it lt:lt \vt~ndt.rful. As slie p ~ t it on fur thc lit-st tirnt:, letting it fall gently, gently around lhrr body. she remt:mhcrcd \'i\.irlly thc! swish and sway of her first lorrnal evening drcss that s l y had \;,om yt:ars heforc, hefore she had w e n met Louis.

She had heliwad herself heautiful then, and maybe in that flighty time uf youth shc had heen. I t I ix l almost frightonrd her at first, how much she had lo~,ed the long dresses, the night long dances, how much slit: had loved tllc eyes of the young men upon liel., how much she liiid l o \ d the d a n g ~ r o ~ ~ s thrill of throwing back their gnzcs proudly, boldly. That sexuality so encouraged then, now so channeled. Now as she reached up into the dark satin tunnels for arms and neck and head she slo\vly let herself twist from side to sidr as fnld upon fold nf the hlack satin fell down.

She wanted after all, slie had said to Louis, to he at her best in this porlrait. She wanted desperalely to he heautiful for this, to be transformed the way it had seemed to her that Thonias Eakins had done to his wife and sister. Edith had seen their pictures at his studio. The man was a genius t h y said, and she had been mesmerized by the common, tired, grayness of his hony wife that had become serenity and grace on canvas. Perhaps when this man looked at her he would see her as she sometimes saw herself. A glimpse caught in the hall mirror while pass- ing, a quietly stolen, sideways glance that showed a fleeing beauty, a grace, a light and passionate form. Grace.

She walked onto the landing when she heard his clatter of entry downstairs. The sunlight from the opened door helow felt strange on the bared arms and neck of her evening clothes. How contrived and artificial this all seemed. She chewed her painted lip nervously. The sounds of servants chattering ordered suggestions, the sudden sharp and stinging smells of oil and turpentine caught at her. She turned hack into the dim light of her room. She would wait until things were more settled.

The Anatomy of Sound The instructor cautrons us before he starts the film to lrsten for the woman's vorce, tunnelfng up her throat, call~ng to her hands. keep still, and we hear her whfsper echo, rfcocher throuph the chords: those Irps

The film slows and we observe this woman speak, her lefi pro file from cheek to breast bone cut away to cancer. The chords quiver and part, the wings of an angel caught rapelling past vocabulary, before pain, lodged just above the heart. -

we'd tried to imagine flutter and resound, $'lowly, thefilm begins to quicken,

ticketing on a film the voice assumes its shape.

that roNs a class to silence. One by one we hide our ears. afraid to hear what we have seen,

Thfs is what we've come to see, hear it again around us, the echo

our voices in the flesh. in a cough that signals something m r e ,

All week we've tried to isolate the certainly of a loose roCK

what ir vocal, pictured casfanets, to send us down the hillside,

the kiss on the throat that mimics crying for our voices, and our hands

the lips inside, a hummingbird drop to our throats.

fighting its cage of bone Barbara Cairns Portland

Portrait in oi l of Mrs. Edith Mahon b y Thomas Eakins, 1904

When she at last arrived before him she was surprised at his accumulation of props and tools. She had thought only of an easel and some pencils; there were those, hut also small tables with hottles and tins, round tins stuffed with spat- tered brushes, a few small canvases here and there, piles of paper, and boxes crammed with more boxes, glasses, cloths, and who knows what. It seemed as if his whole studio had invaded the cool recesses of her drawingroonl; as if a hlack- smith or a circus had set up shop on her well tended lawn.

new widow srrll that slow IOSS

darkness weaving through the prnes

a flourish of birds just out of sight

a naked scrub flailing away at the night

S.D. Feeney Portland

He seemed to notice nothing strange, but glanced briefly at her then ordered her to a monstrous chair he had carried in from the hallway. It had never seemed meant for actually holding a human form, but here he sat her down, and there she stayed for some hours, pushed and primed into just the pose he wanted.

Instead of her own gaze, now she had to meet his dissecting stare - a clear- eyed man who spoke little. It was understood between them that he would initiate any conversation. He made inconsequential small talk, perfunctory and vaguely bossy such as a doctor might make while examining his patient. She had wondered what an artist would choose to talk about, and she was a bit dis- appointed. But she did not mind the scrutiny.

His forehead was high, and broad, and square like an expanse of light above those keen eyes. He knit his brows just slightly as if scowling or sometimes as if about to cry. Those eyes stared as calmly, as ungenerously as her own had, seldom wavering when he spoke or pulled now and again at his trim beard, mut- tering to himself. In front of him, faced away from her, something grew, helped with pencil, paint, squares, and rules. Made as much like a map or a blue print might be, she thought. He would sometimes snatch another piece of smaller paper and draw something quickly, snatching looks at her in rhythmic nods of his head. His burly frame bent, stooped, twisted to reach this or that he needed from the supply spread out on a canvas throw around him. She sat always still and staring, leaning slightly, just as he had said. He released her just before lunch. "Today, just studies," his only words of explanation for his work.

He came almost daily for six weeks. Louis was not pleased by this extra- ordinary number of sittings. Edith complained to her friends gathered over tea. "What an inconvenience! My mornings are all taken up. How tiresome!" But really she loved their sessions. To sit for hours, beautiful in her black dress, under the stare of a strange man. She leaned ever so gently against the sharp outlines of the baroque carved chair, just touching, for hours, while he watched her, studying her face and neck, and breasts, and arms. She loved the feeling of her long heavy gown in the glare of morning sun, though he always drew the drapes while he painted. She loved the long silences; the time for quiet, still, and hidden thought. Private.

Then one day he announced he was finished with her. "The studies are done and the underlying form is on the canvas," he said in his most business-like man- ner. "I expect to deliver the portrait in three, possibly four weeks, madam."

Edith waited, nervous, annoyed that the morning sittings were over. It left a great hole in her days that she was at a loss to fill. For days she stalked her room. What was it she should be doing? A woman of leisure. After a week or so she learned to resume early morning meetings with the staff; her day's orders given, she managed to pick up slowly the old rhythm of ordering her social obligations and attending to her correspondence. Still, she waited.

She was late coming down to breakfast the morning the portrait arrived. Louis stood impatiently before it, the remains of his breakfast still on the table. "I do not like it," he gave his verdict in clipped breaths, "This is a travesty of you, Edith. That man shall get no money out of me! I must go now or I will be late." He straightened his cravat before the mirror in the hallway and slipped his arms into the sleeves of his greatcoat that the maid held for him. "The gall of the man, and after taking so long about it." He pressed his lips briefly against his wife's cheek and went through the door.

Break fast You face me over scrambled eggs the morning after we make love for the five hundredth Itme. You read my horoscope which says Take care in motion. But I am made of moving parts. When I turn away from you my thoughts slip like glass in a kaleidoscope. Patterns break.

Edith sat down and looked at herself across the room. A look searching, penetrating, unflinching as her look in the mirror that first day in preparation for the portrait. Tears gradually formed in her eyes without their closing, impos- sible to tell whether because of the long stare, the sting of it, or because of what she saw. There she sat, the woman of the painting, leaning into the darkness of the big chair, a woman trapped and old, not beautiful. Her hair in the dry wisps of age; the light catching eyes sad, despairing. Her thin lips looked pale and bitter, stretched to stifle a smile, word, or cry. Stretched habitually as a stage for mean- ingless pleasantry. Her skin enveloped the big hones of her sad face loosely, with a slack that slid down her shadowy neck to broad white shoulders framed in a heavy dress of bows and twinkling sparks, her body somehow placed into this frivolous upholstery. The glib velvet and puffs of fatuous sleeves so distant from the face full of care and sorrow, and longing and, oh! what longing. For a touch, caress, a stare out of some unknown distance beyond the drapery, and carpets, outside the door, down in the distance her eyes glazed and longing stared.

But there was a beauty, Edith saw, as she stared. A great heauty, notin her face o r form exactly, but a beauty of the thing. He has taken everything from me, she thought, hut what has he made? It was something very good, very fine, some- thing that would endure. With his paints he had taken her light and her shadows, her hulk, and her grace, and her longing, and made a message, a song, a wonder. She saw this. His hours of careful scrutiny that she treasured had simply picked her clean for his own work. There are things, she mused, that I can never say. He has said them for me. He has made me for all times, and she supposed she had helped a little, her light, and shadows, and sad longing. And grace.

She realized that her money could miraculously buy this thing Eakins had made. It was hers, for awhile, this vision of herself, to stare out at her from some private wall, and this made her feel like a wire of excitement was down her throat. This power of her wealth; the heauty and truth of this bought thing.

"1 will accept it," she said aloud, "and I will pay him his fee as contracted."Then she settled down to drink her coffee while the maid gazed darkly at her proud head.

Ellen Endter Cumberland Center

He Hast Found Out Our Bed going through the morning paper we glance a t an article describing how flash floods have driven hundreds from their homes and then

as though to keep up with a metronome we turn thepage to get on to the sports to see what teams are playing and where and when

a t noontime on a turnpike going south as the thermometer hits ninety-five along one stretch in half an hour we pass

eight motorists pulled over hoods upraised and thinking someone else will get to them we never let our foot budge from the gas

plates in our laps in front of the T V we cooly watch the rescue crews at work amid the carnage of an airline crash

and safe in the assumption that not one of those charred bodies will be known to us we fork down without pause our corned beef hash

and thus as night shuts down we recognize without resort to printouts briefs or polls that worm of Blake's insatiably a t work within our cankered hearts our deadened souls

Wendy Kindred Fort Kent

Richard Aldridge Sebaseo Estates

Summer Job

In my mind's eye, I can see the way it must have happened. A solitary figure climbs the ratlines to the top of the aftmast. The figure straightens, no longer a person hut a patch of sky charred by the sun. Pause. Then quickly an arc, the swift glide downward, a flick, a splash. The wake is rocked to calmness by the waves. Nothing.

It was a summer's job, a season aboard a coastal schooner. A thou- sand bucks wages plus a few shining quarters doled out by passengers. Romantically viewed, it was the most free of lives - the old wind-in-your-face-as-you-wander-the-coast job, yet at times it was a slavery known only to the deep South. Stack those plates, polish that brass, fill the cap'n's coffeepot, strip forty-nine hunks, and make sure your sneakers are white at the end of it all. Workdays starting at five in the morning, ending at midnight, six hours off on Saturday. Repaint the smallest scratch, replace the worn rigging, foxtail the ladders, keep those sneakers white. The schooner became a queen bee around which the drones hovered, pampering, fussing, mollycoddling. No wonder they call a ship a "she".

I remember the time one of the sailors and I discussed the possibility of ghosts. It was in the main salon, the passengers had finished eating, and Jack was lingering over his own late meal. Around us the white of hrightwork and the dark, rich varnish gleamed in the caress of candlelight. The sounds of jovial passengers on deck seemed to come from far away, as did the clatter of dishes and hits of song drifting from the galley. Jack paused in the midst of his meal and started telling me how he pictured the schooner years from now. That summer the cap'n was in his seventies which meant a forced retirement before too long. Since he didn't want to sell the

schooner, there was a chance he would give her to a museum. She would sit in a harbor, polished up, though not as thoroughly as we could do it (nobody could beat those six coats of varnish we had put on her deck). The schooner would he overrun with gawking visitors by day, silent as the sea by night. And at night, the ghosts would come out.

A s Jack spoke, I could picture the salon stirring to life when the darkness crept in. The candles would glow as they did now to gleam on brass and hrightwork. I could almost hear the clink of glasses and hum of conversation. The idea of ghosts was enchanting. The sweat we had poured into this schooner we did not want to see belittled by negligent, uncaring hands. A crew of ghosts would care for the ship; passengers, too, would be on board to keep her from loneliness.

Several summers had passed following my season aboard when I heard of the drowning. One of the crew had climbed to the top of the mast, tied his sneakers to the lines, and then plunged into the sea. Whether he fell or dove was not known. His body lay below the sur- fare for eight hours before being found.

Although derlared an accidental drowning, the boy's death remains a mystery. And since that summer, I have begun to recall other deaths. People who had worked on the schooner and died shortly thereafter. The cook aboard the summer 1 was on, as well as sixteen years previous, died that winter. Another crewmember had died several years before that after serving on the schooner for two seasons. There have been marriages and births aboard the ship, hut deaths are not spoken of. It makes one wonder. If there are ghosts on board, are they wearing white sneakers?

Ellen MacDonald Camden

Trying to See the Moose

Trade Secrets Editor's Note; The following poem is com- posed entirely of lines scattered through last year's issue, with the exception of a ' f i lch from Rilke. " The author, who describes himself as "un appreciative fellow kleptomaniac, " works in a long and dishonorable literary tradition.

With true regard for the-others who stocked the eddies, here's a creel filled with keepers, lifting the best lines, from the spring freshet of the big two-hearted river called the Kennebec, Vol. VI -

An impress in the common geography of our hearts of an old forgotten love leaving a print as rhetoric, an arched addendum:

In a gamble for the memory when something like a response may thrive, you were primed for bed in that garden of great renown down by the marsh, held there by a trick of light between the squash and succotash.

A maimed juggler clapping with one hand touched by an old admonitory demon, prancing wishes causing a cerebral rash, back bent like a bow, teeth bared above the quill until end-rhymes leak at your lips like spiced sanguinity, this new lover named loneliness, in fingering reach of flesh pinched into folds, but remembering patches of snow, contours silvered with ice, feigns a righteous non-violent plunge into unctuous hell fired to chase the descended cold.

Chilled by 'die Beschwerde langen Lernens,' I will not see Venus curling to whirl me, still with death, into the space held open by the crescent moon. The right of first refusal belongs to me. Won by will? Or fantasy?

On Crowley 's Island Grey has filled the cove and settled in the firs. Beside the shore, granite swims as smooth as whales. Cormorants land on the grey wet bocks, hang out their wings to dry.

The beach collects a wash of broken things: pieces of wood and bones. From the polished fragment of a whelk - against the rising water's sound - beats a dim, far rhythm like a heart.

The whales submerge. The cormorants dive. Our eyes lift to see farther than the current carrying the waves away, lifl to that lost place from which a trawler homes, bearing a corona of crying gulls, and culling the wake between, the cleft within ourselves.

SUE^ Hand Shetterly Surry

F~rrell Davisson Bar Harbor

To reach the lean-to We drive five hour bordered by trees In flux (deft rouge of swamp maple, Li~ht-fingered gold of birch) and sing while you are frying to learn the harmony, We got ten miles out of our way.

Next day, I wake into cold, and follow Your surer feet across a stew of logs To spy two moose nibbling the further verge. Around the pond you claim lo find a trail- Deadfalls and moss-heaps and briar-spills keep Last century's feet in mind, perhaps. When we arrive, of course the moose have dived For water lilies in your tales of trips Your father took you on, to Canada, In childhood summers. Never mind. A grouse Flaunts his neck-ruff and flare of tail, all male. Six pitcher plants straddle a half-sunk log To waif for prey, like beasts. And then your prize: A rub of moosehairs clings to a low branch.

Days later, by myself, I find them forgotten among apples In a plastic bag. They are so coarse and stiff , They'd almost serve a porcupine for quills. Shall I sow them like dragon's teeth? The muscular haunches, sweat, the clash of horns. . . . But it won't work. They strand On my kitchen's empty shelf, Transmuted lilies.

Beverly Grwnspan Brunrwick

sweet perjkme booze y o u b r e a t h e i b rea the . w h i l e y o u sleep i w a i t f o r s leep. i n s igh t s a t t ach t o me. m e m o r i e s f loat up l ike a n s w e r s i n a n R-ball.

a decade of n i g h t s i h a v e la in bes ide you , a n ac t of b o n d i n g n o t m u c h unde r s tood , less ta lked of. o u r m u t u a l s e lves c u r l i n a cocoon of exhaus t . p ro t ec t ed we h u r t l e t h r o u g h t h e mi lky w a y t o ext inct ion.

i wake , c h e c k f o r y o u bes ide me. f r e e fall. you ' re off s o m e w h e r e s h o o t i n g pool, ge t t i ng d r u n k , ge t t i ng wrecked, h a n g i n g n u t - or you ' r e he re , r e e k i n g of alcohol , wheez ing , whistling. r a r h o h y d r a t e s p o u r t h r o u g h y o u r l i p s d r a g t h r o u g h m y nos t r i l s pa s t c l amped m o u t h t o s a t u r a t e t h e palate.

i k n o w t h i s smell . i t 's a mo the r ' s k i s s i n Sa tu rday n igh t d a r k , r u s h i n g m e o u t of d r e a m t o f i nd h e r loose, buoyan t , o t h e r t i m e s r e s t r a ined a n d so t ired. a p e r f u m e t u r n e d h e r s t r ange r . a n d i n t h e morn ing , nothing.

so y o u exha le boozy d a r e m e r a f t beyond w h a t ' s k n o w n . t o t h i s ex ten t i t r u s t you: we are t e n y e a r s bedded a n d haven' t de s t royed e a c h o t h e r yet. we grow i n r h y t h m kin . we sa tura te . we r e p r e s e n t t h e o the r . we a r e a p r o n o u n , a w r i t h i n g body.

t h e bed i s empty . s l eep ing i k e e p vigil. i s t a r t l e awake . t e n m i n u t e s l a t e r y o u p u l l i n t h e doo rya rd . s o m e p a r t of m e h a s b e e n o u t s ea rch - i n g f o r you , s t a n d i n g sen t ine l a l o n g t h e road. r egu la r ly i t happens : k n o w l e d g e of y o u precedes t h e senses.

y o u b r e a t h e y o u drif t . i a m a l i s ten ing ear . t h e s o u n d of y o u r b r e a t h i n g i s hrea th ing . w h a t i de sc r ibe here , t h e mating.

lee sharkey skowhcgan

"HelIoKnowles? This is Amanda. Is your offer to use the pool still open?" "By all means, Amanda! Come on over." "Great! You are planning to he home then? I'll. . .oh, ah, I'm a little scared of the

dog, Knowles, will he he tied or something?" "Rex? Oh don't worry, Amanda, he'll be safely confined. It's so hot today, Helga

and I had no plans at all and we'd love the company." He knew he would, very much.

"Oh, so Helga is home?" Amanda paused. "Well, I'll see you in a hit then." She hung up. She was sure could still make the best of it.

Amanda had met Knowlcs twice during her visit with her folks. Their neighbor, unassuming, kind, he had on each occasion offered the use of liis pool to her and her daughter. Graying, paunchy, perhaps a hit of a fool, but it didn't matter. Who knew what passions might lie under his transparent surface. He was married, hut that was insignificant to her. His wife a real zero. Over the hill. Maybe he was too harmless. It was more the sport of the chase that she enjoyed and here was a chance for some mildly amusing recreation to sal\,age the last f e ~ , weeks of the summer.

As she slid the screen door open, Rex whined to go out. "No Rex. Go lie down." she ordered. "lt's too hot for you out here anyway." So hot she'd have sooner taken a nap in the cool indoors and saved the entertaining for later when the sun wasn't so cruel.

"Hella, Amanda." she called, laboring down the steps to the terrace with the loaded tray. "Where are your folks today? They aren't coming?"

"No, they're off visiting. Though 1 surely don't know why, on a day like this." Watching Knowles place a table between two chairs, slie crossed in front of Helga to help him.

"Need a hand?" "No, thanks dear. Here, you take tlie chaise lounge. Helga and I will use these

chairs." Helga amhled over to tlie table, thumped the tray clown heavily, then cnllapsed

in a chair with a grunt. She'd have liked to put her feet up hut Knowles had precluded that. The soul of hospitality, she thought sourly.

Amanda noticed her discomfort and demurred, "Oh, sorry, Helga, I shoulcl'\~e given you a hand lt's so nice of you hoth to have us over. The pool is a hlessing,

Predator So what if Ben had left her. So what if he said he was sick of her "games." He'd

never minded her flirtations at first. In fact lie had rather enjoyed the effect she had on m m . But now that they had Melissa he thuugllt it was time to stop kidding around. What a hore! She still felt a need to he admired hy men. TI] attract.

Her latest "diversion" had teed Bt?n off hut good and he niovetl out. That was four weeks ago. Amanda was pretty sure he'd he hack. Re couldn't stay away much longer. In the meantime, one mure little test to reaffirm her attractiveness wouldn't hurt. All in the name of sport. Harmless fun.

Today was one of those steamy, hot August afternoons. Heat wave. Dislant objects undulated eerily. Though the humidity was intenst:, the oppressi\.e sun scorched, parching, wilting. Amanda and Melissa crossed the field to Knowle's I ~ O L I S ~ .

From his door he watched tham She held the littlt: girl's hand and carried a straw bag. She stepped catlike through the tall grass, as if watching for snakes. The sun reflected so brightly on their hlonde heads that lhev appeared to emanate their own golden light. Antancia's measured, delicate movement was sensual, exciting. What a beauty, Knowles thougl~t. Beside liim, Rt?x terised, gruwling. He cuffed t l ~ o dog's nose.

"Quiet, Rex!" he dernandeci, hut tlin dog harked loudly. Kno\rles grahhed his collar. "Just go around to the pool," he callcd out, pointing to his right. "Make vnurselves at home. I'll put Rex in and hring us some drinks."

Smiling at him, Amanda led the child to the side of the hnuse. 1'111: fortyfont in- ground pool was enclosed hy a slattcd r e d w o ~ ~ d fence. From tlie cuncrt:lc apron stcps of redwood planking led to a raised screentd porch on tho end of tlie hnuse. The pool \rater sparkled, smelling faintly nf chlorint:. At least Knowlns i h n neat and careful man, Amanda thought.

Knowles sighcd deeply as lie mt r red the kitc11t:n. She was sornt: guod lookrr. Whining, Rex clicked over to IIelga.

"He wants to get out, hut I don't bvant him to upst:t Amanda nr her littlt? girl. Make sure he stays in. I'm glad they decided to come over." he cornrnentr!d to Helga. "Fix us all some drinks, will you? I'll go move the chairs down off the porcli to the terrace. And hring the paper when you come." lie said, disappering toward the porch.

Helga Knowles frowned. She put ice, glasses, and liquor on a tray. Beauty ain't everything, she thought. She's no great shakes. When she'd spoken with Amanda, ~ e l g a had found her rather shallow. A flashy, brainless type. Self- centered. Not the kind of woman a man would want for a \rife. Amanda's folks had said she was happily married to some business executive or son~cthing, hut something was amiss. If the marriage was so happy, m~hy vvasn't her husband with her on vacation?

She frowned again, halancing the heavy tray in one hand as she reached for the paper on her way to the porch. She stopped inside the sliding screen d ~ x ~ r and looked out. Knowles was talking animatedly, arranging furniture, following Amanda as she lowered the child onto the steps at the shallow end. He was sud- denly energetic after con~plaining only an hour ago that the heat was sapping all his ambition. Too hot to do anything, he'd said. Now he was out running around in the'sun. The old fool.

Amanda shed her cotton coverup, revealing a clinging scarlet swimsuit. Helga watched Knowles a s he eyed Amanda. He practically Icered at her. No wonder hc was so anxious to have her over. Her 1ow.cut s ~ i t revealed cleavage in the front and every last bone of her spinc in hack. She was, Helga guessed, ahout thirtysix. her tanned skin allowing no extra folds like Helga's. But then Helga was sixty-five and Knowles was sixty. They just weren't young anymore. Besides, she thought, I was shapely enough in my day. Age makes its changes and there ain't a thing you can do about it. It would happen to this one too. There were things that mattered more, like loyalty, honesty, fidelity.

helieve me. We 14,ere nearly heside I I L I ~ S ~ ~ ~ ~ S with tlie heat and nothing to do." "Anytime." Rdga rt:nlarkt:d. She couldn't dredge up much enthusiasm for this

woman. She was too street, tou C L I ~ P .

Knowles chimed in. "Yes, anytime! Ynu are always x,elcome. Just ft:t:l free." He gestured grandly toward the pool, grinning at Amanda.

Helga dropprd icr into a glass and washed scotch ~ ~ v e r i t . Now don't start acting like a complete? ass, Kno\rlcs, she thought.

Amanda spread her legs and sLrctched in front of K I I I I ~ les, her arms 11ver ht!r head, turning her tors^^ sliglitly. "I'm going to takt: the plunge. Anvone care to join me?" She lookcd at Helga. "Isn't it hot t?nougIi for you? Aren't ynu going to p t a xi i t on?'

"No." Helga said shortly. You'd love that, wouldn't you, s~reetie! hlake thme dif- fcrcnces hetween us really oh\ious fnr Knowles, ell? No way!

r \ n ~ a l ~ d ; ~ l'ocuserl on Knou,It:s, nudging him with her hare foot. "How ahout it Knowlr?~? Come on."

"Nope, Ilelga's gonna f i x me a drink and I'm going to read the paper. Yuu gu alieatl." he winked, holding his empty hand to\\ard Helga txpcctantly.

Helga poured liim a.cIrink and freshened her n\\,n. We:ll, at least he had some sense. He lvasn't that good a swimmer. hut withan invitatinn like that, it wouldn't have surprised her if he'd jumped in like a 111vesick sclir~olhoy showing off f11r a girl. She held liis drink o ~ ~ t hut lie didn't take it. HI! was p r t ? ~ c c ~ p i e d wit11 Amanda pnised c~n th~: cnd of tlie di\,ing hnard. She slammcd thr drink I I ~ t h ~ , tsI11c next to him and tussc:d thc paper roughly inte] his lap. 111: lookod at ht:r ~l11111111~.

"YIILI n sntctl to read, clear, SII read." "Oh, yell." Knowles opentd tllr: paper hut stared at i\ninnda insLr!;d. She

;~rched into tllo air and cut the water cleanly, almost s~~undlessly, swin~~ning the ponl's length undt:r watcr and surfacing near 11t:r d;tughtrr. 'I'he child ~ I ~ L I I : ~ ~ I : L ~ in surprise, splashing \vater at ht:r dt?fensi\~ely. Rex he:ga~l har~king, jumping at 1111: scrntm door, p r~vnked by the: child's higli-l~it~lifxl SI ]LI IYI~S . K~imrl t :~ ~ L I ~ I ~ P L I al~ruptly, startled and puzzled 11y thr: sudden n u t h ~ ~ r s t .

"Stnp that Rex!" I I C shouted 'l'lie dog 1pit-11:d only ;I nionie!nt t h m t~trsumod, thrratening. Knowles louk~!d at Helga. "Will ynu LIII s ~~mr th ing al~nut him?"

Helga grinned pervf?rsrly and raiscd her hand Rt!x s111pp:d imniediately, \,a\\mod and slumped to the ~ I I I I I I - , llis e!yf:s intent on the strangers.

"Heat's getting to the dng tou, I ~ L I R S S . " K t i o~ l e s ;ip1ogized to Anianda. Helga drained hcr glass. An imperceptible: smile crossed her fa~w. Mayhe Rex

knows a threat when he S ~ S on(:, she su~.n~ised. He and [can spot a p1111ny a niila away.

After splashing with Mrlissa a few minutes, Amanda swam to the stairs near Knowlcs. Venus-like, slie ascended from a glittering wake of water. It headed, glistening over her entire feline hudy, a shimmering cloak. She gauged Knowles's reaction. He hadn't missed a trick. Ncither had Helga the witch. Oh, this is fun! she thought. She reclincd on the chaise, stretched and sighed appreciatively.

Helga m.atched Knowles snap his paper, clear his throat and pretend 111 htr immersed in i t . He nearly knocked liis drink over whcn III: r twhed for it. So much for nonchalance. Helga wondered just how far Amanda \ \ ~ ~ u l d go with her little charade, right liere in front of her victim's wife. The little hitch w o ~ ~ l d pro- hahly make a play for anything in pants. And Knowles, the damn fln~l, lapping it all up.

"Oooh, that was lovely." Amanda purred. Slit: sat up and reached o \~ : r , touching Knowles on the arm. "I'm so grateful to you. You know, it's so hard Lo rnakc friends when you're in a strange place and don't know anyone. But you'\^ made rnc feel right at home." She smiled coyly and settled hack, langorously rais- ing one leg.

Let's have a little stupid con~ersatinn, shall we? I can match you any day,

sweetie, Helga plotted. "It's such a shame your hushand couldn't join you fur this vacation .. . . " Amanda tensed. "Yes. . . a h . ..well, lie's sailing with friends and well, I'ni not

much of a sailor, I'm afraid." Score one for the old biddy, slie fhought. This is get- ting hetter all tlik time.

"Oh?" Helga p s s e d innocently, "I thought your mother told m r he was too husy wit11 husiness."

Knnwlcs jumped up suddenly, ruhhing his hands together hriskly. "Amanda! Shame on me! You don't liavt: a drink. What can I fix you?" She sniilcd s\veetl>, at him. "Same as ynu'rt: having \vould h e fine." Her voice

was honey, cool and low'. Saved liy the hell, Helga tl~ouglit, swirling her scotch and ice. Best you be

reminded of your responsihiliti~:s and k q ) your claws 111 Iiomc "So tell me, hnw did y m two meet?" Amanda asked with a sidrlong glancl: at

Helga and a warm smile for Knowles when he sat down. "Wt:'\,e bnt:ii married twenty-seven years." Helga claimed irnmtxliately. She

rt:aclied uvt:r and patted Knowles's hand as h e stared into his drink. "(;ut:ss we've heen t l i r c ~ ~ ~ g l i it all t ~ g e t l l ~ r , right c l t ! ~ ~ ? '

"YC~I , Helga was one of those sturdy farm girls right off tlrr? farms of Pmnsyl- vania Dutch country, That's \vIiere wc met. SIIP was thirty-t:iglit and I was thirty- thlY?l:, . . "

"Oh, so y u are younger, I thnugl~t so . . . " Amanda pointed out, winking at Knnwlt:~.

~e lluffed up. "We niarried less than six months a f t w we met. it set:rnecl like a

good idea at the tinit?." "A real stnryhook romance, huli'?" Amanda commtmted wearily. Catch that,

Helga? Ynur turn. "For Chrissake, Knuwles. You make it suund like you did me a hig favor." Helga

sni]~ecl. Knowles luuked at Helga, incl-t?dulous. A~nancla sippc?rl her drink, deliglited.

The old bag was losing her cool. This was reallv delicious. Aniand decided the tinw was ripe.

"Daddy tells rile you have quite a gun collectiun." "Yes, indeed 1 do." Knowles turned to Amanda. "Wuuld > x ~ u like to see it?" "I'd love to," Amanda said, rising, "Helga, \z,ould yuu hn a rlt:ar and keep an eye?

un Melissa fur nit:? Thanks." She slipped he^. liancl under Knode ' s arm and pro- pelled him toward the l imse.

Helga finished ht?r drink and turned, watching tlieni. The Doherman rose and g ~ . ~ w l e d ~i iena~ingly as the pair approac1it:cI the houst:.

"Down Rex!" KIIOM'IRS comnianded. Amanda drew closer to him. "Don't he afraid, Amanda," h e patted ht!r liand. Amanda hoped Ht?lga wasn't missing this as thqv disappeared inside the house, sliding tlie screen cloor s l i ~ ~ t behind them.

Fuming, Helga turned hack ancl fixed another drink. Slie looked at Melissa and felt a sudden twinge of pity for the little girl. Slie had no idea what kind of woman lier mother was. A female 011 the p r o ~ ' l . Helga ~ ~ a l c I i e d lier play con- tentedly. A sweet child like that should he raised by someone who really wanted chilrlren, like I did - not hy someone whose prohahle reason fat. liaving children in the first place \%.as cart:lt?ssness. . . Helga chuckled as slie speculated ahout the enact parentage of tlie child. Hell, she'd prohably end up ji~st like 1ie1. mother. Loose. Leading men on. for kicks. Displaying herself with garish clothes, either too tight or too skimpy, o r both.

It was t ~ ~ ? n t y minutes before Amanda and Knowles emerged, laugliing on the porcli. What's so funny ahout a goddamn gun collectim? She t u r n ~ l to watch Kno\vles t y i n g to prevent Rex from getting out. Iml~ulsively lie callt?d, "Let him out, Knrlwles. Here Rex."

The dog sqyeezed through and ract?d to lier side. She stroked his sleek black face. He? was hers. Her faithful, oheclient cumpanion Amanda returned to the chaise, glancing uneasily at Helga and tlie dog wliilt: Knowles poured hiniself annther drink.

"Knowles has his pride and juy," Helga noc1clt:d tnward tlie house, "and I have mint?" Shc sniil~!d at Rex, patting him. "Knmvles got him fur me on 11ur anniver- sary. He's OUT alarm system. Depenclahle, efficient, and a good furm of prntec- tion, clun't \,ou think? No thief would want to tangle with him I daresay." Letting that sink in, she ~ ~ n t i n ~ e d , "I trained hini nlyself 10 r ~ s p u n d to my hand signals."

K~iowles Iealled toward Amanda. "It's true. The dug oheys her immediately. I don't even know tlie hand signals."

"Impressive." Amanda rotortt:d. She reached for her straw hag. "Oh, Knowles, would you put sume lotion un rn?, hack?" Slie grahbed Knowles's palm and squt:czed white cream onto it. With a glance at Helga she flipped ontc her stomach.

Knowles sat on tlie edge of the chaist:, licked his lips, and reached with 110th hands for her hack. He struked Iiw s111\3'1y, rhythmically. Amanda rnoancd.

The heat, the scotch, the sun, and Knuwl~s's fascinatiun u,itIi Amanda's hudy ~ ~ \ w ~ ~ ~ I ~ e l r n e d Ht?lga. Her fingers dri~mrnt:d the a rm uf Iior chair. That hitch! Slit? Meas playing it to the hilt. And Knowlt:~, the sucker, \,as hlindocl tu her sclienie, so uvercome was lie hy her all tuo u h v i ~ u s char~iis. He had n e \ w het:n so ardent with her! Neve~. in their twenty-sc:vt:n years of niarriagt: had lie ever dune that for lier. Did h e tliink slie \voukln't like to b e treatttd like that? He always just

assumed that a "sturdy" woman like liersdf could manage for herself. Suddonly slie let lier hand drop in frunt nf Rt:x's face, twitching lier fingers in a signal.

The dog leaped toward tlie child at tlit? shallu!v t:ncl, tensed, grmvling, jaus o p n , cani~ies gleaming. The child screamed and fell f~ i rward into the watw. Anianda vaulted from the chaise, knocking Knuwlt:s in111 tlie puol. Slit? d m v fur the girl and pulled lier back to 1111: .uhalluw end. Knn~4t:s surfaced, c<~ug!iing.

"Helga! What o n e a r t h . . .? fnr Chrissake, call him off!" Helga signaled again and the dog rnow?rl to the stairs at tlie shalluw e n d

waiting, snarling. Amanda pulled lierself and Iiw daughter up the stairs, placing 1it:rst:lf squarely in front of tlie animal. She shiftt?d Iiw wt:iglit, rc:acl.v to catch tlie dug in the throat with Iiw fuot if lie moved. Tlit? dr l hitch !lad pla,vcd lier hand, hut she'd damn \voll hr:ttt:r call the dng uff and quick if slin \dut:d him.

The two women stal.ed at each other, each ready fur t1it:ir next iiio\.t!. Amanda ma\, he a sclit?rning least:, hut it was clcar 10 Helga tliat she wasn't scared. Helga might he old and ust:d 1111, hut it 111ukt:d as if slit: wasn't al im~t III give Amanda a ticket to ride w,ith K~io\vIes. The niessagt:~ I Z I : ~ ~ ~rt:laycd in an t:lt:ctrir moment.

Knu\\'lc?s trearled water, cnnfus td "Ht:lga'?" Melissa wliinipe~~t:d bt:llind Anlancla and Ht?lga cunlly r:allftd tlit: Duhorman to

ht?r side. Sht! patlcd him calmly. Amancla cruss~:rl in f r m t of lier with Melissa. At the chaise, slit: grahlit?d httr straw Ilag and [laust:rl, gazing at Helga icily.

"Thanks f m tlie swim." "M,v pleasure, dear." ans\v~!t:c:d Helga. Turning tu Knowles, Amanda addt!d, "Your cullt:ction is f;tscinating, Knowles.

Perlidps you'll slic~w nit: 1111\v 111 sliout smit:tinit:. . . " Slit: sn i i l~d warnily at him once more. " I ' l l he seeing y m . Sum? Slit? s t r ~ d c off t ~ u a r d lht: liouse across the field.

Knowlns cougliod, floundc:ring at tlit: sirlt: of the [ ~ I I I ~ . "I'm so s11rl.y a h m t the clog!" he r:allt!d after ht!r. To Hdga lit? gaspcrl, "Yuu s l i~~ulr l~i ' t haw: let Rex uut het-I:. L M I ~ what hapl~ennd. I liopc 111: hasn't scart:d IIW away fur goucl." HI: stared Inngingly at tlie retrrating figurt:.

"But that's \vliy \z.e lia\,e him, darling." slit: said sarcastical1.v "Fur pt:utnctiun." "But Amanda is harmless!" lie argut?d. Is slit: no\%? Helga sippt:d her drink ancl tvatchcxl Amanda's suntan lutiun uoze

11111 of tlie tube in :I grf:asy rihlicm on the hot r:t:nit:nt.

Joan Anderson Powell Manchester

Poem for Ex- Wives, On a Line from Charles Buko wski So, still getting on and off the bus no luggage but a paperbag of afterthoughts,

I wonder where those rings are now- some star's back molars

a gold service for whatever cool delight an Arab eats

or in some dusty pawnshop with saws and knives and

chipped glass eyes once costly, fitting no one.

I make their lives seem better after me.

Sylve~Ier Pollet Easl Holden

This issue of Kennebec Is dedicated t o Gordon Clark, its founder, who In encouraging young writers over two decades and In continuing his s c ~ p u l o u s editing, has earned the gratitude of writers and readers in Maine.

JTP. CKI

Chinese Tortures Tonight I had to wedge a chair against the refrigerator door. The freezer's frozen over and the door won't close.

There's a drip like a slow tick, a broken record. The Chinese Torture we always heard about as kids. The hole

wearing into the forehead. That slow bullet of water and madness seeping in beneath the spasms of a red light. A thousand miles south

of here, in Florida, right now, my mother's kicking pastel covers from her gilded bed. The television's glow surrounds her head. She twirls a strand of ashen light, considers carefully remote control. Oh,

she worries more and more about her daughter who grew up in the cushion of a sculpted hedge, a rug so thick it smudged the polish on her toes. Coral roses climbed our t re l l i~ed~at io out west, as in photographs from garden magazines.

Outside the skylil garret of my room tonight, I can almost taste the sturgeon moon. Blue, dimpled flesh, fresh-water roe, the inner ebony of caviar. I think I'd choose this moon over the silks and taffetas of petticoats I wore.

There's more to sorrow than lost finery. More than the antique, family clock I still keep amid the clutter of my dresser top tracking time with the Chinese Torture that beats continuously and never frees.

Deborah Ward Portland

Herbert and Virginia met at Skimpjl'~ Bowling Alley by the candy machine. Her Milk Duds jammed. He called the manager, the man who Checks out shoes.

Herbert and Virginia tried love that night. Morning came, she left only a note scotch-taped to his orange pajamas. She needed to be mysterious. He wanted mystery. They met by the candy machine.

Herbert and Virginia married in a chapel. Skimpy provided the cake. On Thursday nights, weather permitting, the couple continued to bowl.

If you're looking for something to change Look Again.

Martha Henry North Windham

Breading the So ft-Shelled Crabs I have neglected my body working myself into a shell so that, breezing into the fish market today and seeing a delicacy I had long forgotten set apart from the usual haddock and mussels

I might be eight years old, out to eat at Johnny's Restaurant with my parents and able to order anything I want from the menu.

Even now, breading the soft-shelled crabs, their finely stippled bodies tha; give to the touch translucent as Japanese lanterns Isense how fhinis the membrane between what I was and what I long to be

both states of the shell as it hardens then sloughs hardens then sloughs as the season demands.

Inside, the same sweet tenderness. I have never lost the taste for havrng what I want.

Alison H. Deminp Cape tlizaheth

KENNEBEC: A Portfolio of Maine Writing

This is Kennebec's seventh year of publication. Our format and news- print make possible a selected distri- bution of 5,000 copies, thus pro- viding Maine wri ters wi th an audience no "little" magazine can offer. We publish as many new writers each year as possible, while trying not to neglect the established ones. In this endeavor to bring Maine writers to the attention of the public we are supported by the University of Maine at Augusta, Forum A, and an increasing number of writers whose submissions enable us to present Maine writing that is worth reading.

The Editors

Editors: Gordon Clark, Terry Plunkett

Assistant Editor: Carol Kontos Typesetting: The Cornp Shop Layout assistance: Phil Paratore

Cover photo by Richard Norton, Belfast

Next issue: manuscripts acceptd 9/15/63 to 12115i63. While the editors continue to encourage the submis- sion of free verse, for one year only Kennebec is seeking verse in the traditional forms, e.g., blank verse, sonnets, terza rima, sestinas, ballads, etc.

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